Bad blogger

Since I am getting nasty-grams from my family for not blogging enough... this is for them. Don't get used to it though, I don't usually bow down to threats that easily! You just happened to catch me at a good time. Craig and Owen went to Target so I have about a half hour to blog just for you, Patrick : )

Owen continues to do just great. We're about 3.5 weeks out of surgery now and at this point there isn't a thing we do differently with post surgery Owen. He climbs, wrestles, jumps and everything else he wants to do without anything bothering him. Oh, and did I mention potty training?

So, about a week or so ago we bought Owen his first potty chair. He's seemed interested in letting us know when he poops or pees at times so we thought we'd slowly introduce the chair and see what happens. We took it out of the box today and Owen was fascinated with it. I told him it was his very own potty and he constantly pointed at it and said "potty... pees" or "poop".  He sat on it a lot with his pants on which is fine. I expect this to happen very slowly and I don't want to pressure him at all. Towards the end of the day I asked him if he wanted to use the potty again. "YEAH!!" was his reply. I thought that was pretty cool so we went inside and I asked him if he wanted to take off his pants and diaper so he could put some pee in the potty. "YEAH!!" was his reply again so off they came. Well, he never peed but he sat on it a lot. Lifted up the lid, closed the lid, would sit on it again. Kept pointing to the inside and would say "pee".  And so it begins.   

Sentences. Well, kind of.

Owen's vocabulary is expanding quite rapidly at this point. We've lost track of how many words he knows (upwards of 50?) but what has been fascinating lately is to listen to him start to put them together to make sentences. 

Here are some recent examples:

(right after surgery)

"Where Elmo go?"

"Night, night mommies."

(when referring to the TV being turned off)

Owen: "Elmo off?"

Me: "Yes, Elmo is off"

Owen: "Elmo on!"

Craig: "Owen, what kinds of food do you like?"

Owen: "Pizza, bock-bock (chicken), cheese, crackers...mmmmmm."

(after waking him up from his nap)

"Bye, bye nap."

And here are a few of the words he's kind of made up:

"Newt-newt" = Fig Newton

"Laquers"=Crayons or colors

"Boot"=Spoon (no idea where that came from)

"Applesop"=Applesauce (he's close!)

"Debbie"=used for any word he doesn't know. 

What pacemaker?

You wouldn't know that Owen had surgery just under a week ago. Other than having some difficulty sleeping through the night, he's back to his old self. Laughing, playing, talking up a storm and is always on the go. The doctors said that we'd probably notice an increase in energy and that Owen would probably have more restful sleeps because he'd be more active during the day once the surgery was over. He was such an active kid to begin with that there might be very subtle hints that his heart is beating twice as fast as it used to but overall I haven't noticed much difference. Time will tell but I think the doctors are used to seeing kids who are very much affected by their heart condition prior to surgery. We caught Owen's so far in advance that he was showing little or no signs of anything being wrong.

His scar from the surgery is about twice as large as I was expecting...around 6 inches which looks huge on a toddler. Fortunately, even though the scar will be quite large, the surgical team did a beautiful job stitching him back up and we've had no issues with it bothering Owen too much. The only complaint we get every once in a while is "itchy".